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Johnathan Corgan 0611ef4c61 Add a fipsctl probe diagnostic for reachability and tree position 
fipsctl probe <npub|hostname> answers, for one target, where it sits in
the spanning tree relative to us and whether we can actually reach it.
It reports our coordinates, the target's, the walk between them and the
next hop we would select, then opens an FSP session, waits for one MMP
receiver report to yield a round-trip time, and tears down what it
opened.

Nothing here changes the wire format. The probe is built entirely from
messages that already exist, and the control socket carries the new
request triplet.

The work runs as five stages that report separately: bloom, discovery,
path, session and rtt. One verdict covering several findings is what
makes an operator read source, and the distinctions are real ones. "No
peer's filter claims this address" says the mesh has never heard of the
target; "a filter claimed it and nothing answered" says the opposite,
that somebody believes the address is reachable and the lookup went
unanswered anyway. Bloom emits the lookup and settles on the gate's
answer, where a miss, a backoff suppression or a zero fanout ends the
probe; discovery waits for the coordinates and owns the ladder timeout.
"Lookup never resolved" and "resolved but the handshake never completed"
part the same way further down. Each stage keeps the reasons it owns, so
no discriminator is lost and none sits on a stage that cannot produce
it.

The path is computed from coordinates, not observed. The output says so
in those words: nothing traverses the mesh to confirm the hops, and a
route display that reads like traceroute output would be believed as
one. A real per-hop trace needs a new wire message, so it is not on this
branch.

The probe is a daemon-side job advanced on the tick, not a blocking
control call. The control socket has a five second timeout and its
dispatch is awaited inline in the rx loop, so a handler that waits for a
handshake would stall the data plane. Start, poll and cancel each return
immediately and fipsctl hides the polling. The job is stepped once at
the end of admission rather than left for the next tick, which
admission can do because the probe commands take the command path and
therefore already run on the rx loop; otherwise every probe spent up to
a full tick period of its own budget before a single message left the
node, which against a one-second tick meant the first three polls of an
already-cached target showed nothing happening.

It cleans up after itself, and that is the part built to be defended
rather than assumed. A session that existed before the probe started is
never torn down, ownership is decided at the moment of action rather
than once at the beginning, re-checked before teardown, and dropped if
our entry is replaced or adopted by traffic underneath us. Removing the
ownership guard reds eleven tests.

The client renders each poll rather than waiting for the end. The daemon
was already progressive, returning the whole report on every poll with
each stage carrying its own verdict as it reaches one, so a client that
waited for `state == "done"` made a probe spending seventeen seconds in
a lookup ladder look identical to one that was hung. On a terminal the
stage block is redrawn in place with a spinner and a running elapsed on
whichever stage is working. Piped or redirected there is no cursor to
move, so each row prints once, at the moment it settles, and the
transcript ends up the same block a terminal leaves behind. `--json` is
untouched and still emits exactly one document at the end, so a script
parsing the report does not have to skip past progress output.

Four things the rendering has to get right, none of them automatic:

- A running stage may only report what the daemon has observed, and must
  never preview an outcome. Every settled text keys on `reason`, which
  is null while a stage runs, so the success arm renders for a stage
  that has not succeeded and a running session row would claim the
  handshake completed.
- The elapsed column comes from the daemon's clock throughout, the
  running stage's figure being the report's elapsed less the stages
  already accounted for, so the numbers a viewer watches are the ones
  the final report prints.
- A frame shorter than the last one blanks the rows it no longer covers
  and walks the cursor back over them, or the previous frame's tail
  stays on screen under a report that has stopped mentioning it.
- The discovery ladder is read from the report rather than assumed,
  since it is configuration and a node may not be using the default. One
  line per request sent, with the timeout that attempt was given and
  whether it drew a reply, the last animating while it is in flight.

Below the block, the tree walk is one line: self, up through the least
common ancestor, down to the target, with the ancestor emphasised on a
terminal and left plain in a pipe or a file. Naming the ancestor alone
left the reader to assemble the route from it and the two coordinate
lines above. Where the target is itself the ancestor there is no descent
and the line ends on the emphasised address.

Stages that were never attempted print no row. A failure marks
everything behind it not reached, and saying that three more times adds
nothing to the failed row that already said it. The rule keys on
`not_reached` rather than on the position of the failure, because those
are not the same set: a failed path stage does not stop the probe, since
the preview touches nothing and the session can still succeed where it
named no next hop, so the rows behind that one describe work that really
happened. A skip keeps its row for the same reason, being a result
naming why a stage was unnecessary rather than an absence. A probe that
fails before the path stage prints no path section, which had been
restating the failure as "no coords" and "no next hop".

Two counts the discovery stage gets right that are easy to get wrong. It
marks itself running while it waits, where publishing `pending`
throughout would read to a poller as a stage that has not started. And
the first attempt is counted when the request is sent rather than when
the pending table is next observed, since a lookup answered inside one
tick never appears in that table and the fastest case would report no
attempts at all.

Two honest gaps: the HopNotSendReady branch is not reached by any test,
and the concurrent-probe cap counts only unfinished jobs without a test
covering that filter.

Adds 63 tests across 32 files.

One changelog entry under Added, describing the released state: the five
stages and why they are separate, the session the probe opens and the one
it must not tear down, the path being computed rather than observed, the
three control commands and why they cannot block, and the two rendering
modes. It says in as many words that the wire format is unchanged.
2026-08-21 05:24:53 +00:00

300 lines
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# `fipsctl`
Command-line client for the FIPS daemon's control socket.
## Synopsis
```text
fipsctl [-s SOCKET] <subcommand> [args...]
```
## Description
`fipsctl` connects to a running daemon over its control socket
(Unix domain socket on Linux/macOS, TCP loopback on Windows), sends
one JSON request, and pretty-prints the response. Exits with a
non-zero status if the socket cannot be reached, the daemon returns an
error, or the request times out.
`fipsctl keygen` is a special case: it does not contact the daemon and
operates purely on local files.
For the line-delimited JSON wire protocol, see
[control-socket.md](control-socket.md). For the YAML configuration
that defines the socket location, see
[configuration.md](configuration.md).
## Global Options
| Flag | Argument | Description |
| ---- | -------- | ----------- |
| `-s`, `--socket` | `PATH` | Override the control-socket path (Linux/macOS) or TCP port (Windows). |
| `-V`, `--version` | — | Print the short version. |
| `--version` | — | Print the long version. |
| `-h`, `--help` | — | Print usage and exit. Per-subcommand help via `fipsctl <subcommand> --help`. |
## Subcommands
### `show <what>`
Read-only queries against the daemon. Each subcommand maps 1:1 to a
control-socket query (see [control-socket.md](control-socket.md)) and
prints the response's `data` object as pretty JSON.
| Subcommand | Control-socket command | Returns |
| ---------- | ---------------------- | ------- |
| `show status` | `show_status` | Node-level status: identity, version, peer/link/session counts, TUN state, recent sparklines. |
| `show peers` | `show_peers` | Authenticated peer list with link IDs, transport addresses, MMP metrics, Noise/rekey state. |
| `show links` | `show_links` | Active links (one per FMP-authenticated peer): direction, state, byte counters. |
| `show tree` | `show_tree` | Spanning-tree state: root, my coordinates, parent, peer declarations. |
| `show sessions` | `show_sessions` | End-to-end FSP sessions: state, traffic counters, session-MMP metrics, path MTU. |
| `show bloom` | `show_bloom` | Bloom-filter state: own filter sequence, leaf dependents, per-peer filter summaries. |
| `show mmp` | `show_mmp` | MMP metrics summary: per-peer link-layer metrics and per-session session-layer metrics. |
| `show cache` | `show_cache` | Coordinate cache: TTL, fill ratio, per-destination coords and path MTU. |
| `show connections` | `show_connections` | Pending handshake connections: state, idle time, resend count. |
| `show transports` | `show_transports` | Transport instances: type, state, MTU, local address, per-transport stats. |
| `show routing` | `show_routing` | Routing summary: pending lookups, retry state, forwarding/discovery/error/congestion counters. |
| `show identity-cache` | `show_identity_cache` | Cached `(node_addr → npub)` entries with last-seen timestamps. |
### `acl <what>`
| Subcommand | Control-socket command | Returns |
| ---------- | ---------------------- | ------- |
| `acl show` | `show_acl` | Loaded peer-ACL state: allow/deny files, effective mode, default decision, entry counts. |
### `stats <what>`
Time-series metrics from the in-process history rings.
| Subcommand | Control-socket command | Description |
| ---------- | ---------------------- | ----------- |
| `stats list` | `show_stats_list` | Enumerate available metrics, their units, and the per-ring retention windows. |
| `stats metrics` | `show_metrics` | Dump current counter values for every protocol metric family (`forwarding`, `discovery`, `tree`, `bloom`, `congestion`, `errors`). |
| `stats peers` | `show_stats_peers` | List peers tracked in stats history (active or recently active). |
| `stats history <metric> [options]` | `show_stats_history` | Fetch a time-series window for one metric. |
`stats history` options:
| Flag | Argument | Default | Description |
| ---- | -------- | ------- | ----------- |
| `--peer` | `npub` or hostname | *(none)* | Required for per-peer metrics; resolves through `/etc/fips/hosts` if not an npub. |
| `--window` | `<N>s` / `<N>m` / `<N>h` | `10m` | Window duration. |
| `--granularity` | `1s` or `1m` | `1s` | Ring resolution. `1s` uses the fast ring; `1m` uses the slow ring. |
| `--plot` | — | off | Render a Unicode-block sparkline to stdout instead of JSON. |
### `keygen [options]`
Generate a new FIPS identity keypair locally. Does not contact the
daemon.
| Flag | Argument | Default | Description |
| ---- | -------- | ------- | ----------- |
| `-d`, `--dir` | `DIR` | `/usr/local/etc/fips` (macOS), `/etc/fips` (other Unix), `%APPDATA%\fips` (Windows) | Output directory for `fips.key` and `fips.pub`. Matches the directory the platform's packaging installs config into, which is where the daemon derives the key paths from. |
| `-f`, `--force` | — | off | Overwrite an existing `fips.key`. |
| `-s`, `--stdout` | — | off | Print `nsec` then `npub` to stdout instead of writing files. |
`fips.key` is written with mode `0600` and `fips.pub` with mode `0644`
on Unix. After running `keygen`, set `node.identity.persistent: true`
in `fips.yaml` or the daemon will overwrite the keys on next start.
### `connect <peer> <address> <transport>`
Tell the daemon to dial a peer over a specific transport.
| Argument | Description |
| -------- | ----------- |
| `peer` | npub (bech32) or hostname from `/etc/fips/hosts`. |
| `address` | Transport endpoint, e.g. `192.168.1.10:2121`, `[2001:db8::1]:2121`, or a Tor onion. FIPS-mesh ULAs (`fd00::/8`) are rejected for the IP-based transports (udp, tcp, ethernet). |
| `transport` | One of `udp`, `tcp`, `tor`, `nym`, `ethernet`. The named transport must be configured and running. |
### `disconnect <peer>`
Tell the daemon to drop a peer link.
| Argument | Description |
| -------- | ----------- |
| `peer` | npub (bech32) or hostname from `/etc/fips/hosts`. |
### `probe <target>`
Diagnose whether a mesh endpoint is reachable, in five stages, and
report a per-stage verdict so a partial failure localizes itself.
| Argument | Description |
| -------- | ----------- |
| `target` | npub (bech32) or hostname from `/etc/fips/hosts`. |
| `--json` | Emit the report as JSON instead of human-readable text. |
| `--timeout <secs>` | Client-side ceiling. Defaults to the budget the daemon computed, which scales with its tick interval. |
The stages are:
1. **bloom** — does any peer's announced filter claim the target, and
did a LookupRequest therefore go out? A miss ends the probe here and
is a statement about the mesh's own knowledge: nobody has heard of
this address. Skipped when the coordinates are already cached, and
when the target is a directly connected peer.
2. **discovery** — waiting for a LookupResponse to answer with
coordinates. Each request the node sends gets its own line under the
stage, with the timeout that attempt was given and whether it drew a
reply. Failing here is the opposite finding to a bloom miss: a peer's
filter did claim the address, and nothing answered for it.
3. **path** — the least-common-ancestor walk between the two
coordinates, plus the next hop this node would select. This is a
**local computation, not a traceroute**: no hop beyond the first is
contacted, and the tree distance is an upper bound on the real hop
count because a crosslink cut-through can deliver in fewer hops.
When no coordinates were available the walk is not computed at all:
`path.coords_known` is false and every tree field is null, rather
than a default that would read as a finding about the spanning tree.
4. **session** — a full Noise XK handshake over FSP. Completing it is
genuine end-to-end evidence: our route reached them, their route
reached us, and the remote holds the expected static key.
5. **rtt** — one MMP sender/receiver report exchange, for a real
round-trip time.
Exit status is 0 only for an overall verdict of `ok`; `partial`,
`failed` and `cancelled` all exit 1.
**The stage block fills in as the probe runs.** Each stage reports its
verdict at the moment it reaches one, rather than the whole report
arriving at the end, so a slow stage is visible as the stage that is
slow. On a terminal the block is redrawn in place, with a spinner and a
running elapsed on whichever stage is working; piped or redirected, each
row is printed once, when it settles, and the transcript ends up the
same block. A running stage reports only what the daemon has observed —
which requests have gone unanswered so far, whether the handshake is in
flight, how many receiver reports have arrived — and never previews an
outcome it does not have yet. The per-request lines under the discovery
stage carry the configured timeout of each attempt in parentheses, which
is the node's own ladder rather than a measurement.
The elapsed column comes from the daemon's clock throughout: a finished
stage carries its own tick-quantized figure, and the stage still running
carries the report's elapsed less the stages already accounted for.
Nothing in that column is measured client-side.
**Stages that were never attempted get no row.** A failure marks
everything behind it as not reached, and the report says that once, in
the failed row, rather than three more times. Two cases deliberately keep
their rows: a *skipped* stage, because a skip is a result naming why that
stage was unnecessary, and everything after a *failed path* stage,
because the path preview touches nothing and the session can still
succeed where the preview named no next hop.
Below the stage block, the `path:` line renders the whole tree walk on
one line, from this node to the target, through the least common
ancestor, which is emphasised on a terminal. It is the same computed
walk the `ours`, `theirs` and `tree walk` lines describe, read in one
piece.
`--json` is unaffected and still emits exactly one document, when the
probe ends, so a script parsing the report does not have to skip past
progress output.
**What the probe leaves behind.** It tears down a session it opened
itself and never touches one that already existed. Three residues are
deliberate and worth knowing about:
- The coordinate-cache and identity-cache entries a lookup produced are
not evicted. They are TTL-bounded shared read caches, and evicting
them could strand an unrelated flow mid-route.
- The remote's half of a probe-created session persists until its own
idle timeout (default 90s). There is no teardown wire message. In the
window between our removal and its idle purge, any session frame the
remote sends lands here as one unknown-session reject.
- To obtain a round-trip time the probe sends a `CoordsWarmup`, which
starts MMP reporting on the session. On a session the probe does not
own, that reporting continues until the idle purge — the same traffic
any single data packet would cause, and bounded, but a real change to
a session the probe did not create. The report names it under
`cleanup.warmups_sent`.
Running a probe against a production node is safe: the job carries its
own deadline daemon-side, so it cleans up whether or not the client is
still there.
### `profile tick <on|off|status>`
> **Reading the output.** Step durations are wall clock measured across `await`
> points, not CPU time: a step that waits on I/O accrues that wait, and other
> tasks may run inside the span. That is the intended measure for head-of-line
> delay, and it means a large step is not necessarily an expensive one.
> `arm_starvation` is measured directly as the entry time minus the deadline
> the interval scheduled that tick for. It is not derived from
> `tick_entry_gap`, which carries no starvation signal on its own: under a
> steady delay every gap is exactly one tick period.
Start, stop and inspect a capture of the rx-loop tick body. **Present
only when both `fipsctl` and the daemon are built with
`--features profiling`**; the feature is off by default, so a stock
package does not carry this subcommand and a stock daemon reports
`profile_tick_*` as an unknown command.
| Subcommand | Control-socket command | Description |
| ---------- | ---------------------- | ----------- |
| `profile tick on` | `profile_tick_on` | Create the capture file and start recording. Fails if a capture is already running (naming the active file) or if the directory cannot be written. |
| `profile tick off` | `profile_tick_off` | Stop the capture. The writer is woken immediately, drains once more and is joined, so the command returns promptly. Succeeds, reporting nothing active, when no capture is running. |
| `profile tick status` | `profile_tick_status` | Report `idle`, `running`, `stopped_by_cap` or `stopped_by_error`, plus the active path, bytes written, flush interval and byte cap. |
`profile tick on` options:
| Flag | Argument | Default | Description |
| ---- | -------- | ------- | ----------- |
| `--dir` | directory path | `/var/log/fips` | Where to write the capture. Created if absent. Use it to profile a non-root `cargo run`, or on a platform whose log root differs. |
One file is written per capture, named `profile-<UTC timestamp>.tsv`.
It opens with a `#`-prefixed header block (node npub, build version,
platform, configured tick period, flush interval, byte cap, start
time), then a tab-separated column header, then one row per measured
step per flush interval:
```text
ts_unix kind domain name count max total unit
```
`kind` is `step` for a timed span and `gauge` for a sampled scalar, so
a gauge value never lands under a duration column; `unit` names the
unit of `max` and `total` for that row. Every step present in the build
gets a row every interval, including zero-count rows. Gauges cover
ticks per interval, peer count, the wall gap between successive
tick-arm entries, and the arm-starvation delay, which is measured
against the deadline the tick was scheduled for rather than derived
from the gap.
A capture stops itself on reaching 32 MB, appending a `#` line saying
so; `profile tick status` then reports `stopped_by_cap` until the next
`on` or `off` clears it.
## Exit Codes
| Code | Meaning |
| ---- | ------- |
| `0` | Daemon returned `{"status":"ok",...}`. |
| `1` | Argument parse failure, control-socket connection failure, daemon returned `{"status":"error",...}`, or local I/O failure (keygen). The error message is printed to stderr. |
## Environment
| Variable | Description |
| -------- | ----------- |
| `XDG_RUNTIME_DIR` | Used to derive the default control-socket path when `/run/fips` is absent. |
`fipsctl` does not consume `RUST_LOG`; logging is for the daemon.
## Files
| Path | Purpose |
| ---- | ------- |
| `/etc/fips/hosts` | Maps hostnames to npubs for the `connect`, `disconnect`, and `--peer` arguments. See [configuration.md](configuration.md). |
| Control socket (default) | Same resolution as the daemon: `/run/fips/control.sock` if present; then `/var/run/fips/control.sock` on macOS/FreeBSD if present; then `$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/fips/control.sock`; finally `/tmp/fips-control.sock` (Unix). A privileged macOS daemon bootstraps the private `/var/run/fips` directory. Windows uses TCP `localhost:21210`. |
If you get `Permission denied` connecting to the socket on Linux,
add your user to the `fips` group (`sudo usermod -aG fips $USER`)
and log out and back in.
## See also
- [`fips`](cli-fips.md) — the daemon.
- [`fipstop`](cli-fipstop.md) — live-status TUI.
- [control-socket.md](control-socket.md) — wire protocol.
- [configuration.md](configuration.md) — YAML reference.
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